[1] Sucker Punch Productions was founded in October 1997 by Brian Fleming, Bruce Oberg, Darrell Plank, Tom and Cathy Saxton, and Chris Zimmerman.

Despite having a difficult time finding a publisher and funding, the group's first project, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, was released in 1999.

While it did not perform well commercially, it was well received by critics, which encouraged the team to develop another platform game in 2002 named Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.

[2] The team went against her advice since the target audience for video games at that time was mostly young men, a group which the name Sucker Punch would resonate with.

Seeing the release of games like Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee on PlayStation, the team felt they lacked the necessary skills and experience to compete with them.

Electronic Arts once offered to sign a deal with Sucker Punch for a PlayStation 2 title, though it would have required the company to cancel Sprocket.

The project, which was later renamed Rocket: Robot on Wheels following a trademark dispute,[5] received generally positive reviews when it was released in 1999,[2] however, it was not commercially successful, with Fleming describing the audience response as "tepid".

[6][2] Creative director Nate Fox described the launch of Sly Cooper as a tense experience for the team as Sucker Punch was an unproven studio at that time, and they were unsure about whether the market would be interested in such a "wacko game".

[6] Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was released in 2002 and was both a commercial and critical success selling about 1 million copies, surpassing the studio's expectations.

To help differentiate the game from Thievius Raccoonus, the sequel features improved gameplay and artificial intelligence, a larger cast of characters, and more open levels.

The studio was not directly involved in the creation of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (2013), which was developed externally by Sanzaru Games.

[11] The success of the Sly Cooper franchise elevated Sucker Punch's stature as a development studio, although they wanted to work on something new in order to stay relevant.

Fleming, commenting on the acquisition in 2013, added that Sucker Punch's nature as a "one-team shop", the increasing team size, and its long history of collaboration with Sony, in particular its product development team at Foster City Studio, as the key reasons why Sucker Punch agreed to Sony's acquisition.

[9][19] With Sony's support and funding, the studio continued to make Infamous games, releasing the standalone expansion Festival of Blood in October 2011.

Sucker Punch elected to set the sequel in their hometown of Seattle as they could draw from their personal experiences in the open world's design.

The art and the environment teams had a difficult time transitioning into the project as the game was a huge departure stylistically from the Infamous franchise, which has a "punk rock" aesthetic.

This caused a significantly longer production time compared to other Sucker Punch titles, with development lasting for about six years.

[1] It was a huge commercial success and quickly became one of Sony's fastest-selling new intellectual properties, selling over 13 million copies by September 2024.

The development team was inspired to set the game around Mount Yōtei after multiple visits to northern Japan.